• ONLINE SPIN
    Five Times Matthew Inman Won The Internet
    I love Matthew Inman, AKA The Oatmeal. I love his writing style, his drawing style, and the fact that he has all this technical skill and yet chooses, in his words, to "make my living from drawing fat, frog-eyed, stick-armed oval people." From him, I have learned about mantis shrimp and angler fish. I've laughed at his description of the Web design process and been surprised about how much cats actually kill. But all of these things are just my baseline measure of appreciation for Inman. Below are five times he blew it out of the water.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    TV's Addressable Future Is Closer Than You Think
    I hate to waste things. I hate wasting time, and I despise wasting money. As an old media guy, I also hate wasting budget, which is why addressable media is so exciting to me. I love being efficient and getting things done, and I love when you can say beyond the shadow of a doubt that you've spent your media dollars in the most effective way possible. Pretty soon, I think within five years, I'll be able to say that I LOVE TV advertising.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Why More Connectivity Is Not Just More, But Different
    At the World Economic Forum, Google's Eric Schmidt is predicting that the Internet will disappear. I agree. I've always said that search will go under the hood, changing from a destination to a utility. Not that Mr. Schmidt or the Davos crew needs my validation. My invitation seems to have gotten lost in the mail.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Would You Want To Be A Media Agency CEO In 2015?
    Last week I spent time with a number of senior media agency execs from several different markets, and discovered that their challenge is daunting. The current media agency income model heavily relies on fees. This model is being challenged by fast and furious changes in the media world.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Adopting This One Habit Will Change Your Life
    I know, I know. Hyperbolic clickbait. But bear with me, OK? 'Cause I genuinely believe this to be true: One simple habit can completely transform the way you behave, how effective you can be, and how others perceive you. If you want to be a highly regarded powerhouse, all you have to do is be a chaser, not a chasee.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Let's Talk About That Vox Media Super Bowl Ad
    Sometimes I see a stunt and think, "Wow, I wish we'd thought of that one first." Case in point: Vox Media's PR coup in revealing it would be running a "Super Bowl advertisement" for its news property, The Verge.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Closing The Gap Between Targeting And Performance
    Much of my writing the last year has been about closing the gap in marketing between the unknown and the known, discussing how you should reduce untargeted message delivery to an anonymous audience and instead use data to know something about everyone, ensuring 100% targeted delivery. Data is extremely useful in this situation, but there's a secondary gap you need to close as well, and that lies between targeting and performance. Understanding the data on the front end as well as the back end can lead to massive increases in efficiency and performance.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Publishers As Matchmakers
    I'm a content creator. And, in this particular case, I've chosen MediaPost as the distribution point for that content. If we're exploring the role of publishing in the future, the important question to ask here is, why? After all, I could publish this post in a couple clicks to my blog. And, thanks to my blogging software, it will automatically notify my followers that there's a new post. So what value does Mediapost add to that?
  • ONLINE SPIN
    It's Time To Face Some Advertising Truths
    One of the weird dichotomies in today's media world is that marketers spend a lot of time on the category whose actual impact on business results is not proven or at best questionable, while spending a lot less time on the area taking up the largest chunk of their advertising spend, with a far better track record of actually reaching consumers. I'm talking about digital ad spend versus TV ad spend, of course.
  • ONLINE SPIN
    Teens On Social Media Know The Value Of Forgetting
    Despite being commonly perceived as a negative, the ability to forget has tremendous value. Sadly, social media is generally not designed to allow us to forget. Those horrible pictures of us. That self-obsessed period we went through. The embarrassing argument played out on each other's Facebook walls. I would prefer for people not to have an online record of all the times I've been less than my highest self. So it's not surprising that Snapchat, the social network with built-in forgetfulness, is so successful.
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